Deliverance: The Passing of the Torch In the novel Deliverance, by James Dickey, the themes of man and his mind set are pondered upon many times. The theme "the passing of the torch" seemed to stand out in my mind more and more as the novel concluded. Throughout the novel, three of the characters seemed to rely on the fourth character quite a bit, the hero of the day. Though, towards the end of the novel, their hero of the day had fallen out of the "game," as Lewis called it, when they needed him most. This situation proposed the scene for which the passing of the torch from the fallen hero to the newly risen, soon-to b